


honesty and promise me

by Darkmagyk, lammermoorian



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Big Screwed Up Family, Children of the Big Three (Percy Jackson), F/M, Punk Annabeth Chase, annabeth 'queen of first impressions' chase, ballet dancer percy jackson, cousins for days, no beta we die like men, who wouldn't drift off and miss out on key information with this man tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24987169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lammermoorian/pseuds/lammermoorian
Summary: In the immortal words of the great prophetess, Avril Lavigne, "she was a punk, he did ballet--what more can I say?"
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 20
Kudos: 151





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Darkmagyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/gifts).



Everything about her hurts. Her back is sore, her mouth tastes like something crawled in there and died, and there’s a tiny collegiate marching band going to town inside of her skull, and sure, maybe the drummers are a little inexperienced, but by _god_ are they enthusiastic. 

Oh god her own sarcasm is going to make her vomit. 

Annabeth, mustering whatever strength she has left, physically peels open her uncooperative eyelids to the bright, mid morning Saturday sunshine, and immediately regrets it, letting out the single most unattractive noise she thinks she has ever made. “Fuck me,” she moans, and not in the fun way. With all the grace of a wounded gazelle, she rolls off the futon onto the apartment floor, banging a new bruise into her shoulders. Last night, she and Thalia, they had been in a… not a fight, what’s the word for that thing they do at shows… aw, hell, she can’t remember. 

She can’t remember anything from last night--mark of a night well spent--but the longer she lays on the wooden floor, the more it returns in flashes. They’d been at a bar, she thinks, watching some delightfully talentless excuse for a punk band do their very best, drinking and tallying the lead singer’s voice cracks, until sometime around 2? 3 am? Thalia had decreed the night officially over. They’d been too drunk and too stingy to pony up for a cab all the way back to Thalia’s couch du jour, when she’d suddenly remembered that she’d had a crash pad close by. Which Annabeth remembers thinking as kind of weird, because the two blocks over was kind of a nice-ish neighborhood and Thalia normally wouldn’t be caught dead in those kinds of places, but they’d been really tired. And it is a really nice floor, Annabeth muses, sprawled out on top of it. There’s a word for this kind of floor, it’s on the tip of her tongue, but she just can’t… oh, whatever. Problem for later-Ananbeth.

When her head no longer feels like it’s about to split open, the physical manifestation of her hangover bursting fully formed from her forehead, she rolls herself up onto her hands and knees, and considers the indignity of crawling out to the kitchen for a glass of water. She’s usually the first one up no matter how late they’ve been out, but just in case Thalia has somehow gained the ability to not be dead to the world before 1pm, Annabeth pulls herself together and stands up, each vertebrum of her spine creaking and clicking into place. She stumbles out of the spare bedroom, one hand pulling double duty massaging at her temples and shielding her face from the sun, streaming through the large windows. That’s probably why she doesn’t see him until she’s practically right on top of him. 

There at the stove is an absolute vision of male beauty. Tall, tan, gorgeous black hair that her fingers yearn to run through, and to top it all off, shirtless. All of him is taut and tight: his legs, his ass, his back--there are back muscles she can see that she hadn’t even known had existed, and he’s using them to make… pancakes? 

“Fuck me,” Annabeth moans, in the fun way. 

He jumps a foot in the air, whirling around to face her, and Annabeth has to hide her squeak at his front. Abs for days, a jawline that could cut glass, the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen in her goddamn life. They remind her of the pictures in her father’s photo albums, the off-tone, discolored photos of the Aegean Sea from 1970-whatever. 

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” he says. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

She feels like she’s seen him before, maybe. He’s really, really familiar. “No, it’s okay,” she croaks, blushing at her own gross-ass morning voice. “Um… where am I?” she asks, hoping beyond hope that he doesn’t think she’s a crazy person.

But he just laughs. “Yeah, you guys got in pretty late last night. When I gave Thalia the spare key I’d hoped that she would visit, you know, during actual daylight hours…”

He keeps talking, the deep tenor of his voice piercing through her, and she’s honestly so tired and so hungover that she just sort of drifts off listening to him. She is 100% legitimately lost in his whole general everything, his dreamy eyes, his mesmerizing voice, the smooth curve of his pecs. She could stand there forever, just taking it all in, imprinting him in her mind. 

There’s a few seconds of silence, then suddenly she realizes he’s holding out his hand. For a handshake. Oh god he just introduced himself didn’t he. 

“Annabeth,” she says, taking his (warm! Big! Firm!) hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He smiles, mouth full of perfect teeth. 

Good grief, has it really been that long since she’s gotten laid? If she were still drunk, she would have jumped him right then and there.

Thalia takes this opportunity to come stumbling out of her corner of the apartment, making a beeline for mystery man. “Pancakes,” she moans, zombie-like. 

“Good morning to you, too,” he says, curling around the stove so Thalia can only latch onto his shoulders, instead of burying her face in the hot pan. 

She takes the opportunity to grab him and put him in a headlock instead. “I swear to every god in heaven, Kelp Head, if you don’t dish me up some pancakes in the next twelve seconds, I will personally take your super special awesome box cutter and absolutely destroy each and every single one of your shoes.”

“Bring it on, Pinecone Face.” And they begin a sort of odd, three-armed wrestling match, until she pins him against the kitchen island. 

It hits Annabeth, all of a sudden. He looks exactly like Thalia. Well, not exactly exactly, but really similar. They have the same sharp nose, black hair, and high cheekbones. He’s letting her win, even though those thighs could have crushed her windpipe. And Thalia has a key to this swanky ass apartment (Jesus Christ look at the skyline through that window!). And he’s not Nico--she’s met Nico, and he is all willowy and slender, not remotely this big or broad.

This guy must be her brother then, the mysterious Jason Grace. The dudebro, Silicon Valley douchebag. The blood traitor. Any attraction Annabeth felt is sucked out of her vagina like a vacuum. 

She had been thinking about jumping a _tech bro_. Gross. 

“I’m going back to sleep,” she announces, turning on her heel. “Save me some pancakes or I’ll slit your throat.”

***

Jason, to her immense displeasure, pops up all week. Why is he still here? Isn’t he supposed to be in California or whatever? 

“I’ve been working abroad for a while, but I’m really hoping to move back here, soon,” he says, taking a pull of his hard cider (because obviously he’s too good for beer). “Actually, I’m waiting to hear back on some auditions; ABT, NYCB, that sort of thing.”

“The Rockettes?” Thalia snarks. In retaliation, he flicks her forehead. “Hey!”

Ugh, he calls his job interviews “auditions”? So pretentious. Annabeth cannot believe that she still wants to sleep with him.

Despite being a computer programmer and presumably not having any real time to hit the gym, Jason is built like a brick shithouse. She can feel it every time she “accidentally” bumps into him, which to be fair is a pretty easy feat in the crowded bar. He makes it easier, standing next to her, crowding her. Okay, she doesn’t actually mind. He is warm, and whoever works facilities in this place must be trying to freeze everyone’s nipples off, so if she slots herself against his side, or lets him sling an arm over her shoulder, then she’s just trying to stave off a cold, right? 

Except occasionally she’ll get lost in the sweat shining off the long column of his throat, and she has to start her whole excuse chain all over again. He’s a West-coast bro (but raised in NYC apparently?) tech jock (with a passion for baking and baby sea creatures) selling-out-to-the-Man _jackass_ (who hasn’t let his eyes drop beneath her collarbone for even a second, despite the fact that Annabeth deliberately chose her deepest cut top and her push-uppiest bra), and she is not allowed to sleep with him. More than that, he’s her best friend’s brother. He might as well have a big, flashing, neon red sign over his head that reads “Off Limits.”

Also, weren’t Jason and Thalia not supposed to be on speaking terms? Because they’ve been really buddy buddy this week. Maybe they’ve started to make amends or something. It’s actually been kind of nice, if she’s being honest. Annabeth doesn’t think she’s seen Thalia not-scowl this much in months. Like, she’s actually laughing at Jason’s lame jokes. 

“So what do you think?” he asks, turning his eyes to her and she notices, pleased and just a little bit smug, how his gaze drops to her lips at the mouth of her bottle.

“Hmm?”

“Of the band.”

“Oh, uh.” There was a band? She thought it had just been ambient noise. “They’re pretty cool, I guess. What’s their name again?”

“Ambient Noise.” Jason points to a marquee next to the stage. “You’re too nice--they sucked.”

“Excuse you,” she says. “They are pioneers in the post-melodic-neo-grunge-expressionism movement.”

His eyes practically cross. “The what?”

“Oh, right, I forgot.” She rolls her eyes, a tad dramatically. Thalia raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Your music knowledge ends in the year 1900.”

That had been the bizarrest thing so far. She’d woken up a few hours later, that first day, stomach rumbling loud enough to wake the dead, and she’d stumbled her way back into the kitchen, greeted by a still-shirtless-Jason (and so totally over it by now, like we get it, you’re hot) making bread, of all things, white flour running up his forearms (what the actual hell), and, like, a combination of singing and beat-boxing a strangely familiar tune. This time, he noticed her first, shooting another blinding smile in her direction. “I’m sorry if I woke you up,” he’d said, sweetly apologetic. 

“Was that…” She’d narrowed her eyes. “The Nutcracker?”

He’d grinned, sheepishly. “Yeah. It’s kind of my fall back whenever I have music stuck in my head.”

To recap: douchey Silicon Valley tech bro blood traitor who likes classical music. Disgusting. 

Tonight, he rolls his eyes right back at her. “Just because I listen to classical music for work doesn’t mean that I don’t listen to anything else, okay?”

She huffs. “Oh yeah? Top five albums of the last fifty years. Go.”

“Easy,” he says, pulling himself up to his full height. Good god in _heaven_ he’s so tall. “‘Evol,’ ‘Fever to Tell,’ ‘Nevermind’--”

“Ugh, what, did you read a ‘50 Greatest Albums’ _Rolling Stones_ blog?”

“Well what about you, then? What constitutes good music in the Annabeth Chase playbook?”

“‘Walk Among Us,’” she says, immediately. “‘Unknown Pleasures,’ ‘Horses’--”

“Wow, could you be any more cliche?” 

“Well could _you_ be any more--?”

“Enough!” Thalia grabs Jason by the ear, pulling him away from where Annabeth has just realized was two inches from her face. “You, twinkle toes, go get me another drink.” Grumbling, he trudges off, a light flush dusting the tips of his ears. Her face grows warm in response. “And you,” says Thalia, pointing a surprisingly steady finger. “Lay off him.”

“It’s not my fault!” she protests, automatically. “The hell does he know about food, or music, or--or being so handsome, or--”

“Nope!” Thalia shouts, taking Annabeth’s face in her hands. She’s already kind of drunk, so it’s a little sloppy, and it kind of hurts. “Absolutely not!”

“What?”

“Noooooope!”

“I wasn’t doing anything!” she whines. 

She narrows her eyes. Annabeth can see her brain working, desperately stringing sentences together to be as threatening as possible. “I know you two have this cute Sam and Diane thing going on, but over my dead body, okay?”

Annabeth pouts. “Fine.”

She loves Thalia, dearly. Thalia is one of her oldest, closest friends, and the sister she never had. There isn’t much she wouldn’t do for that girl, up to and including challenge her father to a fist fight in the alleyway behind his corporate office, and she knows that Thalia would do the same for her in a heartbeat. But, Thalia also should really know better than to dangle her brother like that in front of her face and then make him off limits. So when Jason returns with Thalia’s whisky, Annabeth leans up, draping her arms over his broad shoulders, around his neck, and murmurs directly into his ear, “Wanna go back to yours?”

He smiles at her, shark-like and hungry. “Thought you’d never ask.”

***

This morning-after is far, far better than last week’s. 

Last week she didn’t wake up to soft blue sheets and a warm, muscled arm encircled around her torso. Instead of the mother of all hangovers forcing her awake, she wakes up by degrees, soft and easy, each puff of warm breath on her neck bringing her closer and closer to consciousness. She feels like she’s floating on the ocean, calm and serene, unrushed and unhurried. 

After a while, Annabeth turns to grope for her phone to check the time. It’s not like she has anything to do on a weekday, but she’s kind of hoping she can convince Jason to let her stick around for round four or five, because _boy howdy_ did that man know his way around a bedroom. He’d been absolutely perfect: attentive, respectful, generous, and the mouth on him! Even now, the sense memory makes her heart race and her vagina ache, the feel of his lips between her legs and his hair between her hands. 

She’s considering the merits of waking him up with a blowjob when he shifts behind her, pressing a sleepy kiss into the back of her neck. “Hey,” he rasps, voice sleep-rough. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m great,” she says, and the strangest thing is, she really means it. “Your bed is really soft.” Annabeth turns back to face him, and is greeted with an entirely different Jason smile, warm and cozy. It’s like being curled up on her childhood couch with the blanket her mother had made her for her birthday, sunbeams streaming through the windows and lulling her back to sleep. 

“I did that on purpose,” he admits, something sheepish in the single dimple that pops out. “I can get so sore at the end of the day.”

“Oh yeah?” She teases. His lips are so close. He smells like sweat, and salt. “You bring back a lot of people, then?”

“Only the ones I really, really like.” And then they’re kissing again, and it’s just as revelatory as it had been last night. Slower, softer, there’s heat behind it still, but simmering, not raging, warming, not all-consuming. He runs his tongue over the piercing in hers, boldly and without fear. “Mm, do you know what time it is?”

“Time for you to make me breakfast.”

He laughs, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Maybe. What time is it?”

She reaches back, fingers grasping wildly until they hit cold plastic. “Uh,” she brings it to her face, squints. “9:43?”

“Shit!” One second he’d been there, a warm line pressed up against her, and the next he was gone. He’d practically launched himself out of bed, clearing her body entirely. 

She watches, eyes wide as he scrambles about his room, picking up various odds and ends from the corners and stuffing them into his bag: a t-shirt, a pair of weird, brown slippers, a balled up underwear-looking… is that a fucking thong?

“I’m so sorry,” he gasps, shrugging on his jacket from where he’d dropped it on the floor last night. “You can stay as long as you want, just don’t eat my granola or I’ll kill you. Okay, keys, wallet, belt, phone,” he pats himself, eyes as wild and frantic as his sex hair. Satisfied, he wrenches his bedroom door open, takes a step through, then turns back and rushes to Annabeth, bending over and giving her a long, dirty, toe-curling kiss. “Duty calls,” he whispers. “Talk to you later.”

Then he’s gone.

Annabeth flops back down onto the bed, sighing. So much for morning sex. 

It takes her an additional thirty minutes to fully wake up, where she decides that putting on her underwear is too much of a hassle, so she rummages through Jason’s drawers instead, pulling out an old, vomit-inducing orange t-shirt that doesn’t quite stretch past her ass. When she finally wanders out into the kitchen, for whatever reason, Thalia is already there at the kitchen island, helping herself to a bowl of yogurt and granola. “Oh my god,” she moans, “he kept the old camp shirt? Jesus hell.”

“Morning.”

“I can’t believe you.”

She shrugs, opening his fridge. “You shouldn’t have told me not to.”

Thalia opens her mouth to argue, then pauses. “Alright, fair. That one’s on me.”

“He was amazing, by the way,” she says, shit eating grin firmly in place. “Like, I had no idea a human could even _bend_ that way--”

“La la la la la, can’t hear you!” 

Annabeth laughs, pulling out a tupperware of what looks like a leftover ham and egg casserole. “What, embarrassed to hear about how good your baby brother is in the sack?”

And that’s when her world starts to turn itself upside down. Because Thalia looks at her oddly, tilting her head. She gently places her bowl down on the counter. “Annabeth,” she starts, “that wasn’t Jason.”

What? “What?”

“That’s not my brother.”

She snorts. “Uh, yeah he is. He looks exactly like you.”

“He looks nothing like me. Besides, Jason is blond.”

“Huh?”

Reaching into her pocket, Thalia pulls out her phone, scrolling for a few seconds before shoving the screen in her face. “ _This_ is Jason.”

Jason Grace _is_ blond, to her surprise. He does sort of look like his sister, maybe, if you squinted and turned your head to the left. But if that’s Jason, then… “Thalia, who the fuck did I sleep with last night?”

Thalia pinches the bridge of her nose. “You slept with my cousin, Percy.”

Annabeth almost gags. “Oh god, I slept with a guy named ‘Percival’?”

“Actually it’s ‘Perseus.’”

“That’s even worse!”

“How the hell did you not know he was my cousin? I’ve only been inviting him out with us every night! He barely gets time off work as it is!”

She chances a look at the clock on the stove; it’s just about 10:30. “What kind of job lets him start this late, anyway? Some kind of bougie, Brooklyn startup?” It’s unfortunate, but Annabeth does have a habit of attracting business bros. She’s like catnip to them. She doesn’t quite get it, but she won’t lie and say she doesn’t enjoy taking them down a peg in the bedroom, stripping away that insufferable confidence and wringing them out for all they’re worth, before showing them the door. Of course, business bros usually aren’t so enthusiastic about cunnilingus. 

Thalia just stares at her. “Have you been listening to a word we’ve been saying this whole week?”

She stuffs a bite of casserole in her mouth to avoid an answer, and holy crap it’s delicious. 

“He’s a dancer.”

Well. That would explain the thong, she guesses. “Oh.”

“Not that kind of dancer.”

“Oh?”

“Ballet.” 

“Ohh.” Now, that does explain a lot of things.

Thalia shakes her head, chuckling. “I can’t believe you slept with my cousin and you didn’t even know his name. That’s a whole new level, even for you.”

She flushes. “Shut up,” she mumbles around her bite of breakfast. 

Hours later, however, finds Annabeth waking up in his bed after a nice nap to a text from an unknown number. 

_Sorry for running out on you like that . Terrible etiquette, I know. Got your number from Thalia. But I had so much fun  
last night, we should definitely do it again sometime._

Not even a hint of dick pic or eggplant emoji. He is entirely too nice.

Annabeth’s got a number of options here. She could ignore him altogether. Who knows when he’ll be back; she could just waltz out of his life and be done with it. She could text him back, a quick, pithy, “one ride per customer.” Even if he isn’t her best friend’s brother, there’s still a whole host of complications just waiting to be unearthed there, and she really, really, _really_ values Thalia’s friendship too much to risk it.

But she thinks about the way he held her in the elevator ride up, the way he traced his fingers over the industrial in her ear, delicately, deliberately, like he was committing each second to memory. She thinks about the kiss he left her with this morning, and decides to text him back.

_we'll see_

Which is basically a yes.


	2. Chapter 2

Goth isn’t really Annabeth’s scene—hasn’t been since she was twelve, hiding in her room and blasting Evanescence or Avril Lavigne so she didn’t have to spend quality time with her brothers, or even talk to her stepmother at all—but Percy had insisted. She could almost picture his pathetic, baby seal-eyed face as he wheedled and whined at her over text, until she eventually (not at all reluctantly) gave in.

She’s only known him for a few weeks. It’s a little embarrassing how quickly her willpower had crumbled.

Thalia, for whatever reason, had decidedly not been game, even when presented with a large, post-bartending hangover coffee as an opening salvo. “This is a bad idea,” she had said, glaring at the sun so intensely that, were it not for her thick, black sunglasses, she probably would have vaporized it.

“We don’t have to go.”

“No, the show will be great. Pluto’s Daughter is great,” she said between sips of her too-bitter-to-be-real black coffee. “You and Percy, is a bad idea.”

“Protective of your baby cousin?” Annabeth asked, raising an eyebrow, her eyebrow ring awkwardly bumping up against her hair, sorely in need of a shave. She was thinking of getting a second ring. Her mother had once told her that they were the epitome of trash—but Thalia had two, and they looked so badass.

She scoffed. “He’s not the baby.” 

“Then there’s no problem.”

Thalia narrowed her eyes, really considering Annabeth. Annabeth’s own eyes had been described more often than not as storm clouds, dark and heavy. If hers were storm clouds, then Thalia’s were lightning, electric blue, piercing, beautiful, and dangerous, with a temper to match. “Before you started seeing him,” she said, “I’d have said that you’d eat him alive.”

Annabeth smirked. “I have done no eating yet.”

“Ugh,” she rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, now I’m going to be honest with you. He’s going to eat you alive—and your self-esteem is never going to be able to recover. Honestly, I shouldn’t even let you two within ten feet of each other.”

She scoffed, taking a long drink of her own coffee, black but with just enough sugar to make it bearable.

As if a ballerina would ever intimidate her. A fucking ballerina.

The conversation hadn’t exactly ended the way either of them wanted, but Annabeth was still going to keep fucking Percy for the time being, and Thalia was going to let herself be dragged to the damn concert.

The night of, the bar has a line, but Thalia alternately sweet-talks and intimidates the bouncer, and he lets them in. Having tended bar for any place that would take her and not put her on the payroll, Annabeth assumes that she just has dirt on everyone in the service industry in New York City, so they skip a lot of cover charges, and get a lot of free drinks.

It's fucking crowded inside, too, packed to the brim with sweaty bodies and heavy boots. Just another day in paradise.

Thalia glances at her phone. “They’re at the bar, up front?”

“They?” 

Thalia doesn’t hear her, apparently, just wraps her mesh covered hand over Annabeth’s wrist and pulls her through the crush of people. Annabeth has her eyes peeled for Percy’s typical blue hoodie or orange muscle tees, thinking that they would stand out like a sore thumb in this place, but she can’t see a goddamned thing.

Now, punks aren’t exactly known for their radical use of color, but this was another thing entirely, a sea of black and lace and leather. Looking for his black hair is a waste of her time. “So many bad bottle jobs,” she murmurs.

Thalia pauses for a second, frowning at her. “What?”

“Everyone here has decided that they just had to dye their hair black. How original.”

She is silent for a moment, squinting, then looks away. “I see them, come on.”

Her blunt nails dig into Annabeth’s arm as she yanks her even harder.

There, at the end of the bar, a tall guy stands, dressed to the nines—the nines of this particular scene, anyway. 

He looks kind of familiar: curly black hair in a sharp undercut that Annabeth definitely admires, extremely tight, black skinny jeans that leave nothing to the imagination and really went out of style with My Chemical Romance, a t-shirt with a skull on it (because goths, obviously), and a leather jacket, covered in patches. She spots the Italian flag, several for Pluto’s Daughter and a handful of other bands, a pride flag, a couple of music notes, and one that says, “Not gay as in happy, queer as in fuck you.”

“Annabeth,” says Thalia, “you remember Nico.”

Annabeth blinks. The last time she’d met Nico, he’d been wearing a three-piece suit that had cost as much as her rent. Now the hand she shakes has black fingernails and a skull ring, leading up to a face with eyes lined heavier than either Thalia’s or Annabeth’s, with a septum ring and a line of studs up one ear. “Hey.”

“Where’s our prima ballerina?” Thalia asks as Nico offers her a glass of something brown. 

Thalia likes—and cannot often afford—expensive booze, which means that Nico must be paying. Unwilling to be caught in another embarrassing little social snafu, Annabeth tries really hard to remember what it is that he does. Hadn’t he sold his soul to some law firm or other?

“He went to consign himself to a slow and agonizing death,” says Nico.

“What?” Annabeth asks, glancing between the cousins.

Thalia rolls her eyes. “He means Percy went out for a smoke. Nico doesn’t approve.”

“It’s bad for you! This is not a controversial topic,” he says. “I don’t like that he does it, I don’t like that he got you to start, and I’m not going to like it when I go to both of your funerals. But I am going to tell you I told you so.” Then, seemingly as if to undermine his point, he throws back the rest of his own drink, holding up the empty glass to the bartender. “Another,” he calls, “Godfather, if you please.”

If drinks were on Nico tonight, maybe Annabeth could use the cover of the goth crowd to order a glass of red wine instead. It would certainly be a nice change of pace from the shit-ass beer she sucks down on the regular. 

“There he is!” Thalia calls, bursting into applause. “The hell took you so long? Wardrobe malfunction?”

“Yeah,” she hears Percy’s voice. “Someone stole my best pair of tights.”

Turning, Annabeth is suddenly very glad she hadn’t yet ordered a drink, because then she would have dropped it, spilling it all over not only the dirty bar floor, but also her second favorite pair of boots. 

It’s definitely Percy, but she never would have spotted him. Having gone to a dozen or so shows with her and Thalia so far, he had always dressed pretty consistently in baggy jeans and whatever stupid dance pun t-shirt Annabeth hadn’t pilfered already to wear to breakfast: very normal, and just a little bit out of place for the goth/punk scene.

Tonight, he is not dressed like that. 

She can’t focus on everything all at once, so she starts with his too tight t-shirt, with the logo for Pluto’s Daughter splashed across it, like the artist had taken paint and hurled it at the fabric from a mile away. Ripped and sleeveless, she can see every single ridge and line of his biceps, his forearms, his shoulders, even a bit of his decolletage. His pants are black, per the unspoken dress code, and baggy, but he has belts wrapped up and down his legs, emphasizing the size of his muscular thighs and calves. And that isn’t even the worst part. Neither are the studs in his ears, or the black liner around his eyes.

The worst part is the blue lipstick painting his mouth, making his eyes pop, making his troublemaker smile look that much more depraved.

The worst part is how that blue lipstick will almost certainly be all over her thighs by the end of the night.

Thalia’s advice was never going to win out, but now it has no chance.

Despite being dressed up like the goth ballet prince of her dreams, the hero of an angsty, middle school novel Annabeth might have dreamed up instead of paying attention in class but had been too embarrassed to ever write it down, he smiles at her, cheery and bright as ever, kissing her so deeply her mouth must turn blue. In the corner of her eye, she sees Thalia and Nico exchange a capital-L look, one that Percy can’t see, because all of his attention is focused on her. She doesn’t know what that means, but she’s too far gone to ask. 

Percy moves away, still close, still oriented around her, but she has to clasp her own hands together to keep herself from reaching out and pulling him back to her, biting her tongue, rubbing the ring along the inside of her teeth to keep from letting the word “please” escape her lips.

She doesn’t think she’s ever been so instantly taken with any guy—ever. Not even the almost one night stand her sophomore year was college, nineteen and fresh-faced and totally unprepared for the heartbreak that would follow. Last time, Luke had suggested wine to help her get over her mystery man, so that’s what she orders now, taking too big sips and ignoring the slight concern in Percy’s too pretty eyes. 

It’s all packaging, she thinks, packaging designed to make the product more desirable. Basic marketing and design. She knows him, and she knows what he can do with his teeth and his tongue and his hand and his dick. She recognizes it, sees it coming, so she won’t be affected by it. 

“I didn’t know you were coming, Nico,” she says, wrangling her thoughts together. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Never miss a show,” he says.

“Flew back from London just for it,” Thalia says, bumping him with her shoulder. 

“I flew back because my business trip was over,” he corrects. “…But I did take the redeye so I’d be here on time.”

Percy beams at that, so hard she can actually feel it. “Anyone else joining us I should know about?” Annabeth asks.

It’s so weird to look at them all together—all dark hair, strong jaws, cheekbones carved from stone, sexy and just a little bit intimidating. “Any other cousins, maybe?”

Nico glances at Percy, suddenly apprehensive. “Actually, Percy,” he says, “I’m pretty sure I saw—”

“Perseus Jackson!” A whirlwind of blue-green silk assaults her senses as a woman sweeps over to them, headed straight for Percy, almost knocking Annabeth out of the way, wrapping him up in a hug and ignoring everyone else. “How’s my darling little brother?”

Percy awkwardly pats her on the back, shooting a grimace at the rest of them. “Uh, hey, Kym. I… didn’t know you’d be here.”

“It was a last minute thing, I had a free night for once in my life and was casting about for something to do, you know how much I hate not working, and I thought I’d come by and support our dear Hazel.”

Nico raises an eyebrow. “Since when have you been into goth rock?”

It’s not an unwarranted question. She looks wildly out of place here, in her sleek, silk dress and the scent of Dolce and Gabbana’s Light Blue coming off her like waves, in sharp contrast to the sea of ripped jeans and sewed up shirts that surround them.

Kym, again, ignores him. “Mojito, Perseus? I know it’s your favorite.”

Annabeth’s eyebrows shoot up past her hairline. Percy? Percy half-a-cider-no-thank-you-I-don’t-care-for-any-more Jackson likes to drink mojitos? “Ah—” He grimaces, trying to extract himself from her grip, “no, thank you—"

“Oh, you’re no fun anymore.”

“I just don’t like to—”

“Well it’s not like this place will have any rum worth drinking anyway,” she sniffs.

Thalia rolls her eyes.

“Here, take a selfie with me.” Her phone is already raised, thumb poised for action.

“Kym, come on—”

But she pulls Percy close, shoving his head against hers, mouth already pouting. Thalia sighs, turning back to the bar.

After a moment of refusal, Percy sighs too, giving into his fate, and mustering his best vogue for the camera. They make an odd pair, her with her perfect Instaglam and him with his blue lipstick and smudged liner, but with the two of them pressed together like this, it’s easy to tell that this Kym is another cousin. Same eyes, same brow, same inky black hair, she looks exactly like Percy, only whiter.

Satisfied with her selfie, it’s only then that she notices Annabeth staring at her. “And you are?”

Percy sighs, rubbing his eye. “Kym, this is Annabeth. Annabeth, this is my sister Kymopoleia.”

Kym does not reach out her hand. “And what do you do?”

Thalia, from nowhere, slings an arm over Annabeth’s shoulder, whisky in hand. “Nothing that would interest you, leech.”

“I’m an architect,” Annabeth offers. 

“My friend studies at Bartlett, in London. Did you go there?” Kym asks.

“No,” Annabeth says, biting back an automatic retort about Bartlett’s global ranking in Forbes. Ninth in the world, not even top five. 

Kym curls her lip a little, like she knew what Annabeth would have said anyway. “What have you designed? Anything I would know?”

“She designs community gardens and stages for festivals.” Thalia says.

“Oh, so not a real architect, then.”

“The Man doesn’t have to approve of something to make it real. No, her name isn’t on file in some state office. She’s an anarchist architect.” Thalia says. Annabeth bits back a line of her own retorts.

Kym sniffs again. “Thrilling.” Then she turns back to Percy, writing her off entirely. “Perseus, it was lovely to see you again—will you be coming to Santorini this year?”

“Depends on my rehearsal schedule.” The words sound very rehearsed. He’s said this exact phrase a lot.

“Well get that sorted out! You know how mother likes her itineraries.”

He nods, beleaguered. “As soon as I can, promise.”

“See that you do.” Then with a final kiss on Percy’s cheek, off she flounces, disappearing into the dirty, grungy crowd, leaving silence in her wake like the wreckage after a storm.

“Okay,” says Annabeth.

Percy sighs, turning to the bar to order his own drink.

“Sorry about that,” says Nico. “If I had known she was coming, I swear I would have told you.”

“You can’t just go around saying the word ‘cousin,’ Annabeth,” says Thalia, returning to her own space. “It’s like Beetlejuice. Say it three times and you summon one of Percy’s douchey relatives.”

“They’re your relatives, too.”

Thalia scoffs. “Barely.”

“Oh yeah?” asks Percy. “How’s Hercules?”

“Hopefully dead.”

“At least he doesn’t show up out of the blue in wildly incongruous places,” Nico points out.

Percy takes a pull of his drink, and Annabeth does not watch his neck as he swallows. “Yeah, what was up with that? Since when has Kym been into goth rock?”

“That’s what I said!”

“She’s planning something,” Thalia mutters, glaring angrily into her drink. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s planning something.”

“So, I’m guessing this isn’t usually her scene?” Annabeth asks.

“Art is her scene,” Thalia replies, gesturing widely, nearly smacking someone in the shoulder. “The whole of the New York art world.”

Looking back around to the half-lit bar full of badly dressed goths, she thinks maybe calling this the “art world” might be a little bit generous. 

“She’s kind of like an art world barometer,” says Percy. “Wherever she goes, the critics follow—like little baby ducklings.”

“Too bad she’s a fucking snob about it.” Thalia tosses back the rest of her drink, slamming the glass down on the wood, signaling for another with a toss of her head.

“Shame she has such good taste,” Nico muses.

“She has such good taste!” Despite her bravado, Thalia is absolutely a tiny bit of a lightweight, the whisky already going to her head, slurring her speech just a little. “Whole fucking family’s so goddammed good at art.”

“Not the whole family,” says Percy, shaking his head. “Kym can’t make art, she just appreciates it, like Jason. And Triton can’t do either.”

Annabeth has never seen Thalia so much as draw a picture or pick a song at karaoke, but she had been left out of Percy’s little list. In all Annabeth’s years of knowing Thalia, she never even thought that it had bothered her. “I mean,” she says, “if you like art, you could—”

As one, Nico and Percy both shake their heads. Insistently. Violently. 

Staring at her empty glass, Thalia doesn’t notice. Nico replaces hers with his half-finished one, and Thalia drinks without missing a beat. “What about you?” she turns to Annabeth, blue eyes wide. That’s another thing that the cousins all have in common; their eyes are a variety of colors, but they’re all the same wide, almond shape, made more pronounced with heavy, grungy liner. “Got any artistic cousins?”

“No,” she says, wondering how little she can get away with saying. “I only have one, and he’s not.” 

Everyone stares at her.

She capitulates, just a little. “His partner is an artist,” she offers. “Alex is a sculptor.”

Percy looks at her, half-smile on his face. “What does your cousin do if he isn’t an artist?”

His question makes it sound like there are only two types of people in the world to him: artists and non-artists. Given that Annabeth had been sketching buildings since the time she had the dexterity to hold a crayon, it might be true. “He’s in med school,” she says, “fourth year, at Harvard.”

“Ew.” He wrinkles his nose.

“Okay, smartass,” she says, “you talk to your podiatrist like that?”

“You still fucking that med student?” Thalia asks Nico.

“Dating him, actually.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Dinner,” Nico says. “Sometimes lunch. This is going to shock you, but you can actually spend time with the people you sleep with, and even develop feelings for them.”

They glare at each other for a long moment, then, as one, turn and glare at Percy.

“No,” he says, “I am not getting in between this.”

Nico, somehow, glares even harder. “Come on, you’re—”

“I’m not talking about this,” Percy says, his face a hard mask, lips set firmly in a frown.

For the first time ever, it occurs to Annabeth that this ballet dancer could be scary if he wanted to be.

That is… so not a problem. 

The cousins continue glaring at each other, the family telepathy practically brimming with unspoken pasts. A part of her really, really wants to hear where it’s going. She wants to know what Percy’s feelings are on romance, just to make sure that they are on the same page. Casual sex, fun nights, the occasional concert—that’s where they are now. If the arrangement is going to change, she’s going to need to know about it.

Then, the lights flicker, dimming. A roar takes over the crowd, and when Annabeth can see again, Pluto’s Daughter is onstage.

There’s no introduction, no greeting, the band diving right into their first number, an intense, high-octane whirlwind of drums and bass and screaming. Percy screams right alongside them, hands raised and jumping, Nico and Thalia close behind, every unintelligible lyric learned by heart. Even Annabeth can’t help but get swept up in it, her typical aloofness melting away into the crowd.

It really is a great show.

“That was amazing!” Annabeth is almost breathless at the end of it. Her throat feels raw, like sandpaper, her cheeks aching from smiling. 

Percy hands her one of those little plastic cups of water, knocking his own back like a shot, wiping his mouth with his knuckles. “Aren’t they awesome?”

“I had no idea you were such a fan,” she says. “Your Spotify Wrapped must be a mess.”

“I like all music,” he replies, glib. “Even rap and country.”

“Oh, how well-rounded of you.”

“But Pluto’s Daughter is special,” he says. “You know the drummer is my cousin?”

“Very funny.”

“No, really,” says Percy. “Hazel is Nico’s half-sister.”

She blinks at him. “You have too many cousins.”

He just laughs, throwing his head back. “Tell that to our parents.”

Whatever else he might have said gets lost as a small bundle of leather and fishnet emerges from the crowd, launching herself at Percy. “You came!” cries the drummer for Pluto’s Daughter--Hazel. “Oh, I’m so happy you came!”

In stark, stark opposition to how he had been Kym, Percy swings his little cousin around in a big hug. He probably has close to a foot on her, even in her black platform boots, their broad smiles so uncharacteristic in such a dour crowd. Annabeth hadn’t been able to get a good look at her up on stage, but now she’s flush with adrenaline, her dark skin glistening with equal parts sweat and glitter, baby hairs escape from the artful crown of bantu knots, septum ring shining in the dim light of the bar. 

“Of course I came,” says Percy, somehow still hugging her. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Ms. Hazel Levesque!” Thalia crows, well and truly wasted. “There’s my gal!” And she rushes over to join them, almost bowling them both over.

A truly affectionate Thalia is rare, like a four-leaf clover or snow on Christmas. It does happen on occasion, if she’s gotten enough sleep or enough to drink, but the moment is usually fleeting, meant to be treasured, kept close to the heart. Annabeth can count the number of times Thalia has been sweet to her on one hand--never cruel, or mean, but just… brusque. Sarcastic. And yeah, sometimes mean, but never in a demeaning way. Just in a Thalia way. It’s one of the many, many things she loves about her.

The only downside to affectionate Thalia right now is that it leaves her alone with Nico.

She doesn’t not like Nico, she just doesn’t really know him. He’s swaying a little, not dangerously so, just vibing to the noise and the booze he’s already had. 

“Hey,” he says, lurching over to her. “Got a question for you.”

“Okay?”

“I was. Working on those permits. For your show.” He waves a hand. “Whatever. You know that stage set up for that show in the West Village last winter?"

The first time she had met Nico, Annabeth and Thalia had been helping out one of her friends with their outdoor theater, and had needed a little legal assistance with getting the venue all squared away, as they were technically trespassing on some private property. It was nice to flex her creative muscles, though. She didn’t always get the chance these days. 

She nods. “Yeah?”

"Your New York State architect license was on the paperwork."

Annabeth's blood runs cold.

Swallowing away her anxiety, she takes another sip of her water, hoping he’s too buzzed to notice. "What, was I supposed to try and impress Kym with my license?"

Nico snorts. "God, no.” Taking another sip of his drink, he goes to hug his sister, and Annabeth quietly berates herself for not taking care of that sooner. 

Yes, her license is still on file with the state, because it’s so much more convenient to leave it like that, rather than let it lapse and reapply every time she has to do something bigger than a birdbath in a tiny community garden, and being registered still means she has access to the network and can apply for certain grants and it always looks good on her portfolio and she didn’t think the two worlds would ever collide, especially not in a place where Thalia, of all people, would ever find out--

“So,” says Percy, sidling back over to her. “Working on anything good?”

She blinks, the spiral of her thoughts coming to a screeching halt. “Huh?”

“Any cool projects on the docket?”

Projects. Right. “Sorta in between projects right now,” she says, tapping her fingers against the bar. “I finished up that community garden a couple months ago, now I’m just… waiting for the next thing coming along.”

He nods. “I feel that. The precarity’s a bitch, isn’t it.”

“Totally. Almost makes you want to work a 9 to 5 just for job security, right?”

“Absolutely not,” he says. “Wouldn’t give up ballet for the world. I could never work in an office; sitting for so long might actually kill me.”

It might--even now he can’t help but move, shifting around on heel to toe and back again. Everything about him is about movement. Even an office where everyone was on their feet, like hers had been, wouldn’t have been enough for Percy Jackson, she thinks.

“What about you?” he asks. “How would you fair in an office?” 

“Been there, done that,” she says, before she can even think it through.

“Really?” She sees him scan her. Normally when he does that, he’s thinking of her without her clothes on, but now, she’s pretty sure he’s thinking of the ink that runs up and down her legs, and how that might all look forced into some sort of pencil skirt.

"Once upon a time,” she says.

“Was that before or after you decided to become an anarchist architect?” 

Long after she decided to become an architect, but before anything about an anarchist crossed her mind, though her freshman Poli Sci professor, or maybe that sophomore philosophy TA, would probably argue that she isn’t actually an anarchist now. “Before,” she says. “I once tried to be very very different.” Tried and failed, oh so very spectacularly.

“How so?”

She looks at him for a moment. There are layers of mystery that need to be upheld. But she can’t spill her life’s story to Percy after only a few weeks of knowing him, no matter how easy and disarming he may be. She isn’t that girl anymore, and she doesn’t want people to know she ever was. Especially not these people: Thalia, Percy, Nico, even Hazel, who she hasn’t properly met. She can see, standing here, how very genuine and clear they are about themselves. They probably have actual skeletons in their closets, real, agonizing pasts, so much worse than her own.

She doesn’t want them to know she had an honest to god debutante ball. Murder would be vastly preferable. But still, Percy’s eyes are so bright, even in the dark light. His smile is so non-judgmental.

“I used to dream about adding to the skyline,” she says, eventually, “designing something so cool and so fresh that even after I died, everyone would look up and they would know my name.” For a second she thinks he might actually understand. And then she remembers Kym, and his utter distaste for his own sister, whose friend had only managed to get into Bartlett. “But I realized that kind of ego wasn't going to do me any good. And office work wasn’t going to take me anywhere I wanted to go.” 

That bruise to her ego still stings, on occasion. That, and the loss of the only thing she’d ever wanted as much as something permanent. They were separate dreams, really, but two years ago, in that little Upper East Side café, they had seemed like one and the same. Failing so spectacularly in one had felt like she might as well throw in the towel about the other.

Percy in blue lipstick, eye liner, and a very tight shirt makes her think it might have been the right choice.

Maybe.

Possibly.

Assuming she never got another call. Though if Leo has another project for them…

No, she reminds herself. She shouldn’t dream big anymore. She wasn’t going to get there, and she had to be ok with that.

He smiles, lopsided, sympathetic. “I know what you mean. Like, after so many amazing dancers, you have to be crazy to think that you can add something to the canon, something that’s never been done before. But here we are.”

“Here we are indeed.” She clinks her glass against his, and they drink. 

He finishes with a long gasp, licking his lips. 

“Wanna go be somewhere else?” she asks.

“Damn right I do,” he says, grabbing her hand, lacing her fingers together with his. 

An hour or so and a few orgasms each later, they lie side by side on Percy’s bed, soft and sweaty. 

“So your sister is kind of… intense,” Annabeth says.

Percy snorts so hard, Annabeth can feel it vibrating into her. “Yeah. That’s a word for it.”

“What was it like, growing up with her?”

“Oh, I didn’t grow up with her. I grew up here with my mom; she grew up in Athens with our father.” 

“In Athens? Cool.” She’d done a study abroad in Rome, but she’d never made it out to Athens like she had wanted. Too much Pantheon, not enough Parthenon. “Have you ever been?”

He screws up his face, thinking cutely. “A few times. They’re not… great memories, exactly. In retrospect, it’s nice that my dad wanted me to feel included, but bringing his mistress’ kid on the annual family vacation to Santorini probably wasn’t his brightest idea.”

Annabeth’s eyes shoot up to her hairline. “Wow.”

“Kym was actually always pretty cool about it,” he continues, thoughtfully. “She likes to pretend she’s this ice queen alpha bitch type, but she’s got a secret soft spot. And my dad’s wife eventually came around--she even sends me a birthday card each year. My half-brother, though.” Percy blows out a breath. “He’s always been a douchebag.”

Dropping a kiss to his bare shoulder, she squeezes him. There’s a story there, but she knows better than anyone about not wanting to talk about bad family relationships. Percy likes Kym, though, and that makes her safe territory. “Tell me more about Kym. You said she was some kind of art collector or something?”

“No, she’s not a collector.” Percy bites his lip, considering. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I guess you could say that she’s, like… a professional socialite?”

Annabeth sits up, squinting down at Percy. “Are you trying to tell me that your sister is a courtesan?”

He sputters, completely taken by surprise, choking on his inhale. After thirty seconds, Annabeth is afraid she’s going to have to try CPR, before Percy starts to calm down. “No,” he wheezes, coughing. “No, she’s not a courtesan.”

“So, what does a ‘professional socialite’ even do?”

“You know, she… socializes.” Percy waves a hand in front of him. “She goes to parties, meets people, facilitates meetings--she socializes.”

Annabeth frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“I literally don’t know how else to explain it to you.”

“What, is she a spy?”

He opens his mouth to argue, then pauses. “Not… technically.”

“Not technically?”

“Think more corporate, less political.”

Okay, now she’s even more confused. “Huh?”

Percy sighs. “My dad runs this big shipping company that does business all over the Mediterranean. Pretty much the whole family works for him in some way: Triton is some kind of assistant executive, and Kym and my step-mom do, you know, outreach or fundraising or whatever.” 

She’s silent for a moment, collecting the information presented to her. “Is this some kind of mob thing?”

He grimaces. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

“Is your dad a mob boss, Percy?” Objectively, she knows that the mob is a terrible organization responsible for many different types of atrocities, but honestly, the idea is kind of exciting, Annabeth hooking up with the secret lovechild of a mob boss. It’s romantic and sexy in a film noir kind of way.

“No, he just--does some light smuggling. I think.”

“How does one engage in ‘light’ smuggling?”

“Okay, so his business is totally legitimate, but he may also smuggle art on the side. Or oil. Or both. I don’t know and I’ve been told never to ask.”

And she thought her family was weird. She tells him as much. “That’s wild.”

“Honestly? That’s not even the wildest thing about my family.”

She flops back down on the bed, already exhausted. “Percy, I don’t know how many more revelations about your mob family I can take.”

“They’re not part of the mob!” He laughs. “But,” he smirks, looming over her with a familiar desire, “I can neither confirm nor deny that I had to swear a blood oath to the family when I turned eighteen.”

Rolling her eyes, she still easily submits to the heady feeling of his lips on hers, tilting her head back as he travels down her neck. “Okay, I did not sign up for any Don Corleone bullshit.”

“But you’d make such a great mob wife. Though we would have to kill the rest of my immediate family.”

Annabeth giggles, only partly at the ticklish feeling of his lips between her breasts. “I’d help you kill your douchey half-brother any day.”

He glances up at her from her belly button, long lashes fluttering. “That is legitimately one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Full disclosure, Thalia has already called dibs.”

“That’s fair.” Then she pushes his head down further. “Now get to work, Godfather.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back! took a quick trip to the 15th century, but we are BACK


	3. Chapter 3

Several more weeks and hookups later, Annabeth thinks she should probably come clean. Some people might bury it deep, and for sure, Annabeth’s considered it, but, well. It is kind of embarrassing that she didn’t know Percy’s name at first. Stuff like that doesn’t usually bother her--she’s had nameless one night stands in the past, and despite Thalia’s ribbing, she knows that Thalia doesn’t really care either. It’s just that, you know, he’s Thalia’s family, and they’ve seen each other a few more times, and they are planning to continue to see each other a few more times in the future. Or more than a few times. 

Anyway, she kind of feels like she owes it to him. Like he deserves this small nugget of truth, payment for all the times he’s fucked her blind. It’s nagging at her, and she hates feeling like she owes anyone anything. 

Piper certainly seemed to think so, when Annabeth had told her over their monthly brunch date.

“It’s just common courtesy at this point,” she said. “Like, what if you guys end up married and then sell your story to Hollywood, they cast my dad as the male lead, and it comes out in interviews that you didn’t know his name for like a month? He’s gonna get the wrong idea.”

Annabeth wasn’t sure which part was more ridiculous: the movie, Piper’s dad being involved, or them being married.

Anyway, sharing some of her avocado fries, Piper had reminded her that being mean wasn't very punk rock, shutting her up effectively.

She’s out on site in the Lower East Side, taking measurements for plots of land, writing down sun angles and measuring the wind velocity between the brick buildings, when she gets a text from him. 

_ I’m on a break and I’m starving 😩 Want to grab something to eat? _

It’s 2pm on a Thursday and he wants to grab something to eat. If Annabeth didn’t know any better, she’d say that that sounds like a real, honest-to-goodness, bona fide date. (Meeting up at and subsequently leaving bars together does not count as a date, she’s pretty sure. Neither do the booty calls.) He’s been getting a little free with his texts, that boy, sending her selfies and memes and questions about her day, and now this? An invitation to their first, actual date? She should block him on principle, just for the sheer audacity.

_ sure, wya _

_ 520 8th, text me when you get here 😁 _

That’s another thing: Percy loves his emojis. If this is going to continue, they’re going to need to have a serious talk about that. 

She doesn’t need to text him when she gets there; he’s already outside, leaning on the stone edifice of the building like a particularly jacked rent boy in his tight t-shirt and broody look, cigarette between his fingers. The sweatpants sort of ruin the image, though. He looks particularly comfortable in a way that warms Annabeth right from the inside out. “You know, when Nico said you smoked, I honestly didn’t believe it.” she says, not even bothering to say hi. 

He looks up from his phone and smiles, the sun behind his teeth. “Hey!” 

“Hey, yourself.” She doesn’t even hesitate--she plucks the cigarette out of his hand, taking a drag off it herself. “You been smoking for a long time?”

“Who do you think taught Thalia how?” He raises an eyebrow, bemused. “Is that a problem?”

It is, but it’s not like she can tell him that without losing some of her credibility. “Wouldn’t smoking fuck with your cardio?”

Percy shrugs, conceding. “A little. I used to be a lot worse, but I just can’t quite kick the habit. It’s mostly a stress thing, anyway.” 

“Rough practice?” she asks, putting just enough effort into her lip wobble to make it abundantly clear that she’s making fun of him. “Were the other boys being mean to you because of your tights?”

He grins at her, saucy. “Annabeth Chase, do you really think that NYCB rehearses here? In the Garment District?” But he laughs before she can stammer out an answer (and thank God, she’s lived here three years and can barely keep the boroughs straight, let alone the neighborhoods). “I just wrapped up teaching a class. I don’t have to be at rehearsal until 5, I was thinking we could hang out? Bryant Park?”

A first date at the New York Public Library. She almost hates to admit it, but Percy Jackson might be kind of her dream man. “I believe I was promised food,” she sniffs, but she does hold out her hand, and when he takes it, lacing his fingers through hers, she’s sure that he can feel her heart beating, palm to palm. 

Twenty minutes later they’re settled on a bench in the corner of the green, Annabeth halfway into a ham sandwich and Percy juggling a salad and an iced coffee. He’s been regaling her with tales from the more exciting side of ballet, a side she hadn’t even imagined could actually exist. “So by the time I land in Paris,” he says, taking a sip of coffee, “the guy’s foot has swollen up to, like, twice its original size, and when I finally managed to find some wifi to check my phone, there’s, like, eight missed calls from my mom and my agent, and an email from her that just says ‘READ THIS,’ in all caps, and of course the article is in French, which I didn’t really speak at the time, and I was so stressed that my ADHD made it so I couldn’t even read the Google translation, and I had to ask someone to translate it for me.”

“Oh my god,” she says, struggling to keep it in.

“And that’s how I found out that I’d been moved up to first cast in  _ Le Corsaire _ , from the poor barista at a coffee shop in Charles de Gaule!” He laughs. 

“That’s insane,” Annabeth says. “And the show was the next day?”

“It was that night! I had to haul ass to the opera house and get warmed up, because I was going on in about four hours. You should have seen the looks on everyone’s faces when I stumbled in, I’m sure that they all wanted to kill me.” Percy chuckles, taking a bite of leafy greens. “Now I wasn’t just the twenty-year-old upstart American, I was the twenty-year-old upstart American who skipped town when I wasn’t supposed to.”

“How did it go?”

“Killed it, of course,” he says, deservedly smug. 

Despite her best efforts, she’s absolutely entranced; he’s a great storyteller. “I bet you break that story out at parties all the time, don’t you.”

He laughs. “Whatever gets the donors to open their checkbooks, right?”

“I can’t believe you lived in Paris. I’ve always wanted to see it.” She’d had a few chances to when she was in college, the semester she’d studied abroad in Rome, but she just never got around to it. Just another item on her long, long list of regrets, placed somewhere between the sketchy burrito from last week and not telling her mom to fuck off earlier when she’d had the chance. “If I were you, I’d never leave.”

Percy shrugs. “It was amazing, I won’t lie. But towards the end I just really, really missed it here. All my family is in NYC, you know? My mom, step-dad, and my sister live here, and Thalia and Nico and Hazel, too. I tried to come back and visit whenever I could, but being away from them was really hard.” There’s something soft and inviting in his expression when he says, “I’m really happy to be back home.”

“What are they like?” Annabeth asks. “Your family. Your non-mob family, I mean.”

He rolls his eyes, but he grins another one of those blinding grins, too. “My mom is the most amazing person you will ever meet. Not only did she support my dance habit, she did it as a single working mother who had to raise an angry, ADHD asshole of a son who didn’t always appreciate her. I don’t even want to know how many hours she had to work or how many scholarships and grants she had to track down in order to pay for me to go to SAB, but somehow she made it work, and managed to write her novel at the same time. She married my step-dad the summer I turned sixteen, and my baby sister was born the next year.” 

Even Annabeth, cynical and black-hearted as she is, has to smile back. The love he has for his mom is so palpable, so tangible, she can practically see him glowing. “And the…” What had Thalia called them? “The ‘Cousin Consortium’?” 

At that, Percy laughs, full-bellied, unrestrained. “The name was Nico’s idea. I didn’t really have many close friends when I was a kid, apart from my buddy Grover--he had to wear this really gnarly leg brace and I liked to dance, so you can imagine how much we got picked on--but we were all really close growing up, since our dads were all assholes. They may have left us emotionally scarred, but at least we had each other’s backs the whole time.”

This is a very Percy thing, she’s starting to realize: he can not and will not hold back on his feelings. He simply refuses to. Where most guys might try to hide or downplay their affection for their friends, Percy’s is written all over his face. Maybe it’s a byproduct of doing ballet, but he’s so unashamed of his love for his friends and his family and his art, that maybe Annabeth kind of wishes she could be included in that love too, if it always feels this warm and joyful. 

“I think it’s amazing that you guys are so close. I only had the one cousin when I was growing up, and we didn’t really talk all that much,” Annabeth says, almost without her permission. Something about him, it’s just so easy to talk to him. He makes it safe to open up.

“The med school guy, right?” 

Annabeth nods. “Magnus. Fifth generation Harvard student. We’re all very proud.” 

Ugh. Even she has to wince at the false cheer in her voice. Percy gives her a half-smile, sympathetic and soft. “Harvard not really for you, then?” he asks, picking up the threads of a long and complicated story, and one that she absolutely does not want to get into right now. Or ever, if she can help it. 

“More like I wasn’t really for Harvard.” Which wasn’t entirely untrue. She had been good enough for the university in Cambridge, Mass--good enough for two degrees and graduation with honors--but she had never been good enough for her mother’s capital-H Harvard. Never good enough for her mother at all, really. 

Percy takes her hand. His fingers are cold from his iced coffee. “Hey. It’s their loss,” he says, with a sincerity and an intensity that makes her blush.

Every part of her wants to pull away. His thumb is rubbing against the joint of her finger, soothing and sweet, and she thinks she may break out in hives from it. “Damn right it is,” she mumbles. 

He is so nice. So nice and hot and sweet. Objectively, what she’s about to do is a terrible idea, and might torpedo a really good thing that they have, but if she doesn’t come clean now her own guilt is going to drive her insane.

“Okay, I have a confession to make.” Percy raises his eyebrows, slurping the last dregs of his drink. “When we met… and then when we hooked up the first time… I may have… thoughtyouwereJason.”

He blinks. “Pardon?” he asks, mumbled around the straw.

Annabeth buries her head in her hands. “Please don’t make me say it again.”

“You… thought I was Jason?”

“Well,” she sputters, glaring at him through her fingers, “you were being all bro-y with Thalia!”

He is valiantly trying to hold in a smile. “You know, I distinctly remember telling you my name that morning.”

“I was really hungover,” she whines, “and you were shirtless and making breakfast so I wasn’t really… paying attention.”

“For a whole week?”

This is so  _ embarrassing _ , why couldn’t she just keep her stupid mouth shut? “Yeah.” She slumps her shoulders, stuffing her hands into her jacket pocket. “Sorry.”

She’s not entirely sure what she expected: at best a couple of weird looks and a tentative promise to meet up later that would end up not working out, at worst she thinks he’ll just get up and leave her here at Bryant Park. Either way, they’d be doomed to months of awkward interactions, until eventually they wouldn’t be able to be around each other, and Thalia would have to pick a side--and Annabeth’s seen what Thalia does to people who cross her family. She’s seen Thalia beat a dude to pulp for calling Nico the f-slur. Picking Percy over Annabeth? That’s nothing.

So when he starts laughing, Annabeth is completely at a loss. Slowly, at first, then all at once, he’s laughing so hard his shoulders are shaking, and he has to put down his salad so it doesn’t topple over onto the grass. His head is tilted back in joy, the grey, late afternoon light adamant that Annabeth can see all of his features clearly, from his screwed up eyes to his bright, white teeth to the single dimple in his cheek.

Of course, even his laughter is hot. Asshole. 

“You thought I was Jason!” He shrieks.

Annabeth crosses her arms, scowling. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I really don’t mean to laugh,” he giggles. Annabeth can feel her own giggle rising in response, and she ruthlessly quashes it. “I can definitely say I’ve never heard that one before. You do know Jason is blond, right?”

“As a matter of fact, I did not. Besides, you and Thalia look exactly alike.”

He scoffs. “No we don’t.”

“Uh, yeah you do. You, Thalia, and Nico are all basically clones of each other.” 

“Okay, Captain Glasses, whatever you say.” He rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat behind it.

“I’m sorry,” Annabeth feels like she has to say again.

He cocks his head. “For what? For thinking I was Jason? He’s a pretty cool guy.”

“No, for,” she blushes again. All this blood rushing to her head can’t be good for her. “For sleeping with you when I still thought you were Jason.”

Percy scoots closer to her, throwing her a grin and slinging his arm over her shoulders. Without even realizing that she’s doing it, she settles in beside him like she’s been doing it her whole life, slotted up against his torso, tucking her booted feet beneath her legs. “I am choosing to take that as a compliment,” he says, smirking. “You couldn’t resist my charms, even when you thought I was a brogrammer.” 

Annabeth can’t help herself. She kisses him, wiping that smug grin right off his face, and when she finally retreats, after what feels like hours, he looks so dazed she could probably keep calling him by any name she wanted and he wouldn’t even realize it.

After their lunch, they meander for hours, headed in a vaguely southerly direction, holding hands the whole time, a steady, uninterrupted flow that took them all the way from Midtown to Greenwich Village. He tells her about his first day at ballet school; she tells him about her favorite monuments. “There are two architectural environments in America,” she says, ranting, speaking with enough force that she might forget the feeling of his hand in hers, “endless dead suburbia, or cities where every single building is either a concrete or a glass block--and not even Brutalist concrete, just shitty, poorly designed, paint-by-numbers concrete. It is an absolute travesty of modern government that they don’t fund any public works projects anymore.”

“That’s why all the gardens and stuff?” he asks.

“Nowadays everything is built by the lowest bidder. At least I get to add some beauty back into the city.”

“I know what you mean,” Percy says. “Paris is practically overflowing with public works, you almost forget about it sometimes.”

She sighs. “You’re so fucking lucky. Paris is so beautiful and everything in New York is just hideous.”

“Aw, come on,” he says. “Not everything. What about the Empire State Building, or Central Park?”

“Well, obviously, those,” she says, just a teensy bit flustered, but she’s not about to give up the argument without a fight. “I just mean like, normal, every day buildings: offices and apartments and stuff. It’s all so samey and boring.”

He looks to her right, pointing at the building they are passing. “What about this one?”

She turns.

If she had known they were headed this way, she never would have taken them past here.

“It’s… okay, I guess,” she mumbles, staring up at the arched windows, pedimented doors, and Rococo details of Miss Minerva’s Private Pre-College Prep School. A shudder goes down her spine, like someone walking over her grave. “There are better Beaux-Arts buildings.”

Sensing her discomfort, he picks up the pace, and changes the subject.

Finally, he stops outside a nondescript building, turning to face her. “This is me,” he says, a little bit mournfully, squeezing her hand. “Are you okay to get home safely?”

This man is ridiculous; it’s not even dark out. “I think I can manage a few blocks,” she says, lightly swatting him. “Isn’t it kind of early for you, though? It’s only four o’clock.”

He flushes faintly, one hand coming up to rub at his neck. “Uh, well, I always give myself a little extra time--you know, time blindness and everything.”

“You baked in extra time in case I wanted you to walk me home, didn’t you?” She mock-gasps, secretly delighted. “Scandal!”

“Guilty,” he grins. “You’ve been to mine so many times, I was curious.”

She just barely stops herself from laughing out loud at the very idea of Percy coming to her apartment--as if. Thalia hasn’t even been to her apartment. Nobody knows where she lives, none of her neighbors know who she is, and this is entirely by design. “Cut me some slack; a girl’s gotta have some mystery. Can’t make it too easy for you, can I?”

“I have a feeling you’ll never make things easy for me,” he says, white teeth gleaming.

“You better believe it,” she smiles back. “Now that I’ve foiled your plans, are you going to be too bored?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something,” he shrugs. “I’m very resourceful when it comes to boredom.”

Inspiration strikes, and she grasps his hand, pulling him down the alleyway. She almost hates to admit it, but she has something of a Pavlovian response when it comes to hanging out with Percy. Annabeth has come to expect some really excellent sex whenever the two of them meet up, and maybe spending all afternoon with him has made her a little bit horny. 

She presses him up against the brick wall, hidden from the street by the long afternoon shadows, and kisses him. His hands flounder for a second, before coming up to rest on her shoulders, this thumbs tapping against the base of her neck, fingers fluttering on her jacket. It’s an intimate touch, kind of chaste and very respectful, and he holds her with precision and grace. He wouldn’t do anything she wouldn’t want to. This is a date with no expectation of sex on his part. But Annabeth does not want grace right now, spooked by the ghost of her old school. She does not want precision. She just wants him. She just wants to keep him on his toes, keep him interested, blow his mind a little. 

She just wants to blow him, to be honest. 

He squeaks into her mouth as her hands fly to his belt, deft fingers practically ripping it off of him in an increasingly familiar motion. “H-hey,” he says, squeezing her shoulders, “this is--”

“Do you not want me to?” she asks, one hand playing at the top line of his underwear. 

“No--I mean, are you sure? I’m-I’m okay with this, I just want to--”

“I know.” She kisses his cheek, then drops to her knees. “But we’ve got some time to kill, don’t we.” 

Afterwards, when she’s finished with him, Annabeth wipes her mouth, and he whimpers. 

“Ho… holy shit,” he pants, flushed and trembling. 

She tucks him back into his boxers, doing up his fly. “There we go. That was better than being bored, right?”

He nods wordlessly, swallowing, shaking. His eyes are glassy and glazed, stupid like he’s just shot out his brain through his dick.

In the short time they’ve been together (though, honestly, this might be the longest relationship she’s ever been in before… and they haven’t even broached the “dating” conversation yet) Annabeth has been on the receiving end of several different Percy looks. His face will light up with joy when he first lays his eyes on her, so happy to see her (though she can’t really fathom why), glinting like the sun on the water. His eyes will narrow, glaring, even as he furiously tamps down on his growing smile when they start arguing over something stupid, like Annabeth’s affinity for olives. He’ll grin at her, knife sharp and slanted, licking his lips and looming over her after she comes down from yet another orgasm via his mouth or his hands.

Percy looks at her now like someone took a bat to his head, and instead of seeing stars, he sees little miniature Annabeths flying around. 

He pulls her to him and kisses her, entirely too sweet for what she’s just done to him, but that is also a very Percy thing. And when she leaves him with a final kiss on his cheek and squeeze of his ass, she can feel that look burning a hole through her jacket, following her down the alley and around the corner, and she finds that she doesn’t mind the weight of it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls do not come for me and tell me i'm wrong about [ballet thing], i am consulting w my sister who did ballet for 13 years, and if i need to change something for story purposes i will


End file.
